Jericho (West Bank) History Siege, ca. 1400 B.C.

The Fall of Jericho, as described in the biblical Book of Joshua, was the first military engagement fought by the Israelites in the course of the conquest of Canaan. According to Joshua 6:1–27, the walls of Jericho fell after the Israelites marched around the city walls once a day for six days, seven times on the seventh day, with the priests blowing their horns daily and the people shouting on the last day. Excavations at Tell es-Sultan, the biblical Jericho, have failed to find any traces of a city at the relevant time (end of the Bronze Age), which has led to a consensus among scholars that the story has its origins in the nationalist propaganda of much later kings of Judah and their claims to the territory of the Kingdom of Israel.